Saturday, February 16, 2013

Amazon won't just let me give it 5 stars

First they send me an email asking how many stars I'd give my recent purchase. After I click on the link, they error out telling me that I need to enter words as well.

I'm not a music critic. Different people like different music. That's what I've noticed in life. I did like this MP3 CD.

So, what can I write in their box?

The last time I bought music for myself was when we drove down to Nashua for the Borders going-out-of-business sale. I bought the Ziggy Stardust CD.

I'm generally a radio person. I like the spontaneity, the happiness when an unexpected song I like comes on.

Last summer, whenever the Avett Brothers' Live or Die came on it made me happy. It is hard to be sad when a banjo starts to play. This song I liked a lot. I liked its ability to cheer me up. I would sing it in the car along with the radio. I would come home and look it up on YouTube. My daughters liked it too; we would dance to it in the kitchen. I thought it would be a great CD to send to my sister, who was in the dark recovering from eye-surgery, but the CD wasn't out yet. I bought her another CD, and Amazon gave me a $1 credit towards the purchase of any MP3.

I spent months wondering which of my favorite songs to spend it on. Should I get the Avett Brothers song I like? Or spend the dollar credit on Tangled Up In Blue, and buy the entire Avett Brothers CD?
When the credit was about to expire I looked on the Amazon MP3 store and came to the obvious conclusion that the $1 could just be a dollar off on the album price.

The only thing I've done with the last physical CD I bought was put in into our old iMac to generate the MP3, which I then copied to my iPod and to other computers used to listen to music. The CD player in the Subaru and in the living room has broken. So there was no reason to buy another CD when I'm only going to turn it into an MP3s.

Still the question as to whether to buy the song or the CD's collection of songs. Purchased individually they would cost more than the collection. I listened to the excerpts on Amazon and decided that I would like the whole album, so bought the collection.

I have been listening to the album over and over on my iPod at work. It has improved my mood at work, and likely saved me from some instances when I would have reached for chocolate.
There is sufficient variety of music in the different songs. One of them has a catchy chorus with the clever line, "You say you wouldn't know me now, but I didn't even know you then."

Still, all five stars? Originally, I thought yes, because I'm very happy with it. But now I think that five should be perfection, or at least reserved for the greats--the albums for the ages, that withstand the test of time. So David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust is five stars, and this wonderful Avett Brothers album a proud four. Let's wait a decade to see how they progress. I'm looking forward to it.